Opening of Bannacha.com

Dear tea community

I’m William Osmont from France, today i am happy to open my online pu-erh store: www.bannacha.com

During our long stay in Yunnan, we learned a lot about tea culture. If you want to learn how pu-erh tea is processed, discover the most famous tea mountains of Yunnan or simply enjoy the nice pictures and the wonderful landscapes of Xishuangbanna, please, visit our information section: articles.bannacha.com

Hello, William! First of all, I sincerely wish you good luck with your store.

Secondly, I would like to point out some issues I have with your “information” section, which I hope you will take into consideration as criticism that is intended to be constructive.

First of all, the “FAQ” page. My problem here: there’s virtually no information on it.

Think about what you intended to do when the “FAQ” page was created. Who did you create it for? Who did you expect would read it? Surely you intended that page for people very new to pu-erh, right? You MIGHT expect that nearly everyone viewing your site knows what pu-erh is…but if you thought that, you would not have an FAQ page. An FAQ page is to help people who know almost nothing about a site or topic. Well, if someone is completely new to pu-erh, do you think your “FAQ” page would answer any questions they had?

Let me go through a small bit of that page to explain what I mean. (PLEASE note…any questions I list here are not “my” questions, and you don’t need to answer me here.)

What is Pu Er tea Needs a question markPu Er tea is a tea produced in Yunnan

Where and what is Yunnan? Is it a city? A region? Where?

(I know you said, “Yunnan, South China” on the home page, but you MUST assume that people do not read introductory home page blurbs closely the first time they visit a site. They consider this part of the page unimportant!

You could say, “Pu Er tea is a tea produced in Yunnan, a mountainous province in Southern China,” etc. Something like that, which gives the reader a vague idea of what “Yunnan” means.)

with the big leaf varietal.

What the heck is that? What does that mean? Is this sentence telling me that this “pu-erh” tea I’ve never heard of before has big leaves? Why do I care?

(Either you should explain what this means and why it matters, or you should replace it with information that a new pu-erh drinker would find useful.)

The leaf goes through a simple process

It does? What process is that? A natural process? A man-made process? I’m confused! I still don’t know what pu-erh is…

and is sun-dried.

Oh! Okay. Wait, is that the whole process? It’s just sun-dried tea leaves? I’m still confused.

Its taste is very natural.

Compared to what? Natural how?

Is it green, black or Wulong tea?
Pu Er tea is just Pu Er tea, it is a unique family. To make it simple, you can consider that it is a green tea when young and it becomes a black tea as it gets aged.

That made things simple? Now I’m even more lost! Are all green and black teas also pu-erh? Help!

(You could have one paragraph here explaining the differences between white, green, oolong and black tea. This should be a separate paragraph, and first so that people who already know this information can skip it when they realize what the paragraph says. Then have a second paragraph more fully explaining pu-erh as a specialty tea that should not be confused with the above general categories.)

…Do you get the idea?

Look at the descriptions for your teas. Those are much better! Your FAQ should have at least that level of detail.

More points I want to offer up:
-The photos you have in the information section are BEAUTIFUL…but they are too large, and there are too many of them. Consider making a section with a photo album for some of them, and making them a smaller size (possibly with the option to click and make them larger – like a thumbnail but bigger).
-The text stretches all the way across the page and is hard to read! It should wrap around the photos when they are smaller. Also, across the whole site, it is quite small…on a dark background especially, people will find this hard to read. Upgrade the size of it a bit.
-When you are in the “information” section, “Home” does not actually return you to the home page. It returns you to the start of the information section. This is confusing, and will upset and irritate less internet-savvy people. Make this link say something like “Information Home” to be less confusing. Then put another, separate link to the left of that one that says, “Bannacha Home” that directs to bannacha.com
-The logo at the top of the information section ALSO doesn’t direct you to the home page, just the information home! Doubly confusing! People who discover that “Home” does not lead them back to bannacha.com may try to click the logo to get back there – and that is where it should lead! If it does not, they will be even more confused. Some people may genuinely not understand how to get back to bannacha.com except by hitting the “Back” button on their browser, which could get tedious. Those people will be frustrated with your site.
-Your information section is linked under “External Links,” but it says, “Database.” When I went to your site, I promise you this is one of the first five things I noticed, and “What the heck is, ‘database’?” is one of the first things I thought! You need to fix that.

Okay, sorry to dump this huge amount of feedback on you. I see you are new to web design, and I do not mean to overwhelm you. I want to help you clean up your site so it is easy to read and use! If your site is hard to use, it will drive customers away from you. So I hope this is helpful! Let me know if there is something I have said that you want me to explain further.

-I like how the picture fades “into” the cart! That’s kind of cool, a nice visual confirmation that the product I intended to buy went “into” my cart. It also warns me if I accidentally added something without meaning to. Make sure you don’t change that! But…
-You have a tea FAQ, but it occurs to me you have no ordering FAQ. Where do you ship? What are the costs? If I were really shopping, I would want to know that info right away, not when I’m checking out.
-I notice you have voucher codes. That’s cool, but what are they? Both 6688 (“折扣”) and 44000 (“reduction club Nantes”) seem to take off…is it 10%? 1,30 Euros flat rate? Confused here. Since the rest of the site is in English, explain what the voucher codes do in English (and that you can only use one at a time).

Hi Daniel,
Thanks a lot for your constructive suggestions, I will try to fix what you pointed out as soon as possible. It is true that the articles look a bit hermetic for the complete beginner, I think i will write a whole section of basics about tea.

This info website is a long term project, i will improve it and add articles in the future.